Maybe
by Bellatrix-Loves-Voldie
Summary: Sweeney/Mrs Lovett OneShot. What would have happened if Anthony had not spoiled the moment...?


**A/N: I watched Sweeney Todd yesterday, and so thought I'd write a little one-shot. I'm sure there are plenty of fics like this but I haven't actually looked. It's my take on what would have happened if Anthony had not burst in. All of the dialogue is taken from the film, so it's not very imaginative, but I hope you like it anyway. R&R? ******

The weather was dismal, the sky a dull metallic grey broken only by the occasional thick patch of dark, forbidding cloud. Gazing unseeingly out of the grimy glass of the window, Mr Todd thought suddenly that the sky seemed to resemble his very existence this evening. He had not noticed the door creak open, but he assumed it must have done, for he dimly registered a voice behind him, but what it said he neither knew nor was faintly interested. All that mattered was revenge. Revenge on the one who had crushed all of his dreams into meaningless glimmers of longing, and transformed his life into this pitiless semi-existence that so resembled the omnipresent, suffocating sky outside the window.

While he was contemplating this, her voice broke through his reverie again, and he managed to comprehend her words this time.

"Mr T, Can I ask you a question?"

"What?" he intoned listlessly, concentrating on a solitrary raindrop marking its pattern on the glass.

"What did your Lucy look like?"

She sounded almost challenging. The question shook Sweeney a little, though he was well practised in the art of concealing visual emotion, and so his face remained impassive, despite his back being turned to her.

He strained his memory as far back as he could manage, back to that former life that seemed so absolutely to belong to someone else. He felt as if he had no right to invade these sun-filled memories. They were no longer his. The golden hair that had haunted him for fifteen years flitted into the forefront of his mind, and his heart gave a painful jolt.

He must have been silent for a long moment, as he heard her speak again, and her words made the pain in his chest throb yet more persistently.

"Can't really remember can you?"

"She had yellow hair,"

He wanted to sound insistent, defiant, and yet the words sounded feeble, even to him, who had allowed his life to be consumed by the memory that did not exist.

She was coming closer. He could feel her breath at his shoulder but, for once, he felt no desire to shift himself away from her.

"You've got to leave this all behind you now. She's gone." She was murmuring faintly, and each word she spoke was like a heavy blow to his chest. "Life is for the alive, my dear…"

She was so preoccupied with life. All he could see ahead was death. It consumed him.

"We could have a life, us two-"

How could he share a life when he had no life to share?

"…maybe not like I dreamed-"

He'd forgotten what it was like to dream. To have any kind of purpose except revenge. But then…what?

"…maybe not how you remember-"

But what could he remember? The faces in his distant mind were blank and cold. Even the flash of golden hair he clung to was fading…

"…but we could get by."

Yet he knew how to 'get by'. That was all his life had consisted of for the past fifteen years, struggling through each pointless day, trying not to forget to breathe…

Finally he turned to face her. Mrs Lovett was gazing at him adoringly, beseechingly, and he found himself gazing back, immersing himself in the deep brown pools of her eyes, the only things that weren't grey in the world. She had helped him. She had remembered him. The thought seemed to ever-so-slightly ease the dull ache of his heart.

Slowly, uncertainly, he came to a decision. Tentatively, he bent his head until his face was level was hers. He couldn't feel her light breath against his face; she seemed to have been stunned into breathlessness. He stared into her eyes for another second before pressing his lips against hers. It didn't feel right; the cold numbness of his mind did not miraculously subside, nor did the hole in the centre of his heart begin to heal itself, but it didn't feel wrong either. Maybe one day he could love her. Maybe.


End file.
